What follows is a comment to an original post, not the original post itself, which is pretty boring.

Nobody, but nobody, it seems has as many trials and tribulations, as many woes, as gnomish Dave.

In case one's not remembered, gnomish Dave has those five mental "problems" he's hoping gets him a first-class ticket in the parlor car of the disability gravy train.

Quote

davidthegnome (2797 posts) (Reply to original post) June 20, 2018 at 12:23 pm

2. Was there some years ago…[note from franksolich; about fifteen years ago, because the gnomish Dave primitive's in his early or mid-thirties]

I was eighteen, living with a fiance and two small children. Her five year old daughter and our newborn son. We had a place where we couldn’t really afford to pay even the rent, let alone utilities after food.

For a time i bounced from one terrible minimum wage job to another. Mostly washing dishes or telemarketing. How badly people are routinely treated at such jobs (even how I was) cannot be overstated.

Only help from my working middle class parents in addition to food stamps (the old, paper kind) enabled us to survive. On a good week I might bring home 80 to 100 dollars. For her, with some college, it was closer to 175- 200.

On bad weeks, of which there were many, we primarily ate ramen, easy mac, and really cheap, heavily processed foods. Probably resulted in a number of the health issues we all had at one point or another. Thyroid issues for her, pancreatitis for me.

Anyhow… We eventually moved to Sioux Falls South Dakota and stayed with her parents. The idea was that there would be more, better, higher paying jobs…

Surely there were some, but few for a young man, barely more than a boy, with a GED education and no real practical skills. Honestly – daycare costed more than what I could have earned working full time for minimum wage.

My life became a blur of applications, job fares, (really bad) business ideas, diaper changing, being covered in puke (babies do that) and all that comes from being home with the kids.

All kind of came to a head when her step dad, a long-haul truck driver, got laid off. Every spare dime she or her mom made went to paying the necessary bills. Rent even a few days late would have been a problem – they shut off our electricity in the middle of winter and we had no heat, until I convinced my dad to help with the bill.

Around that time, my parents cut me off. They had three other kids to support and told me i had to make it on my own or go home. I had just called them collect from a gas station.

Yeah, i broke down crying then, determined we were ****ed. Eventually though, some really stubborn, angry part of me, insisted I was going to provide enough for us to survive, no matter what.

I would have gladly joined in various types of criminal enterprise if it would have paid the bills. Didn’t really know any crooks though (only barely understood politics at the time).

So I shoplifted, got good at it, too. Would always scrounge up enough change, even pennies, to buy a piece of candy or something to avert suspicion. To this day, I feel both guilty and awkward if I walk out of a store without buying anything.

Sleepless nights, extreme guilt, poor nutrition (the food that is good for you is harder to steal), the knowledge that, any day I could be caught and go to prison. No job offers, months went by this way.

The baby formula and milk were a bitch to steal, too.

Anyhow… I started crying a lot, despite my anti depressant medication. Eventually I got very sick with bronchitis that became pneumonia, even got whooping cough. Started shaking all the time as I lay in bed, throwing up, barely able to sleep or eat…

My fiance eventually told me she didn’t trust me – and I said some nasty things to her, too.

Learning how sick i was, my parents bought me a bus ticket back to Maine where I could see a doctor at the hospital they worked at.

My health slowly improved, but my fiance and I broke up over the phone.

I started doing any job I could get my hands on, lots of under the table work that paid less than five bucks an hour, or temp jobs that paid minimum wage. At the end of pretty much every week, a day or two after getting paid, I would be broke.

All the things I once imagined for myself and my young family fell to pieces. I couldn’t afford to take care of myself, to support my son, to really do much of anything.

Had long bouts of unemployment, shame and guilt drove me to drinking heavily for a time… mental health issues grew far worse.

Ultimately, that is, so far, what my story amounts to. A man who just couldn’t cut it, who gave up. Who now lives only thanks to the generosity of family. I have failed at most of the important things.

It has been… about fifteen years since I have seen my boy. Four since I was able to talk to him.

Yeah, I get being poor enough to steal food. To cry every day, to dream endlessly of release. I get having to depend completely on others to survive.Difference between being broke and being poor… poor lasts a whole lot longer. Now that i can’t work anymore, I don’t even have my meagre old paychecks to pay my.own expenses…

I miss my boy, now nearly a man, who probably hates his sperm donor of a father, who left when he was 2. I once had such great hopes and dreams for him, for me, for what I could teach him, what he could one day do.

I failed him and have missed his entire childhood because I am poor.

Logged

Democrats: A bunch of rich people convincing poor people to vote for rich people by telling poor people that other rich people are the reason they are poor

Hello! Junior college! Union apprenticeship programs and trade schools! Refraining from doing what makes babies when you're 17 and in school or unemployed or making minimum wage would have helped, too!

For the love of God, why didn't this loser ever just "Off himself" A flea on a stray dog is more valuable to society than this guy. And I'm sure we're going to have to deal with it for a couple more generations.

None of those terrible things happened to me. Yes, I ate Ramen and home-made Hamburger helper and had hand-made furniture from spools and milk crates but that was rather normal for a full-time student who worked a part time job on campus.

In fact I find having done those things at a young age built my character mightily and taught me the value of hard work and ow to manage money, do without and BE HAPPY with less. Rather than being resentful I tried to do all I would with what I had available. Friendships were the most valuable coins in my realm.

Perhaps I MADE GOOD DECISIONS as a youth and NEVER EXPECTED ANYONE ELSE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE DECISIONS I MADE -- one way or the other (heck yeah I had some MASSIVE mistakes).

Perhaps I misunderstand life and we should all be rewarded handsomely for making bad decisions. By others.

But that is just me.

Note on edit: after age 17 it never occurred to me that Mommy and Daddy should be resources to financially tap. I assume grown-ups stood on their own 2 feet.

« Last Edit: June 21, 2018, 12:35:08 PM by freedumb2003b »

Logged

Measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with an ax

Hello to the Baizuo lurkers from DU, DI, JPR and Huffpo

DUmmies can no more understand the "Cave" than a rat can understand a thunderbolt, but they fear it just the same. Fear the "Cave", DUmmies. Fear it well.Big Dog 12-Jan-2015

Hello! Junior college! Union apprenticeship programs and trade schools! Refraining from doing what makes babies when you're 17 and in school or unemployed or making minimum wage would have helped, too!

The dude's the perfect inverse of a self-made millionaire!

That would require doing hard work. DUmmies are above doing the same work as the plebs do.

Logged

The policies that are indorsed by this party, that they backer of which are much of the 1 percent, causes a social structure much like the one back before the Revolution.

-Words of wisdom from Lady Freedom Returns

"Arguing with liberals...it's like playing chess with a pigeon; no matter how good I am at chess, the pigeon is just going to knock over the pieces, crap on the board and strut around like it's victorious." -- Anonymous

"A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat." - P. J. O'Rourke

I wonder how many weeks he worked more than 40 hours, or how many of those menial minimum wage jobs he had at one time...

I have held as many as 3 jobs at one time, and worked 50-60 hour weeks up until about 4 years ago. Poor worthless DUmmie wouldn't know hard work if it meant his next meal...

Logged

Murphy's 3rd Law: "You can't make anything 'idiot DUmmie proof'. The world will just create a better idiot DUmmie."

Liberals are like Slinkys. Basically useless, but they do bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs...

Global warming supporters believe that a few hundred million tons of CO2 has more control over our climate than a million mile in diameter, unshielded thermo-nuclear fusion reactor at the middle of the solar system.

"A dead enemy is a peaceful enemy. Blessed be the peacemakers". - U.S. Marine Corp

In fact I find having done those things at a young age built my character mightily and taught me the value of hard work and ow to manage money, do without and BE HAPPY with less. Rather than being resentful I tried to do all I would with what I had available. Friendships were the most valuable coins in my realm.

This right here is what the DUmmies miss in their lives. They make themselves miserable because they don’t have ‘things’ and others have the ‘things’ they want but can’t have because they haven’t earned them. It’s a vicious cycle.

KC

Logged

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

Didn't see a single reason for a GED instead of a diploma in that beyond the obvious sloth and poor life choices. He seems to have had a complete family and stable home through his high school years, a huge head start that he completely wasted. Fifteen years aqo, you couldn't even get into the military with a GED, and the high school diploma had already become just a participation award, not a significant achievement.

Logged

Go and tell the Spartans, O traveler passing byThat here, obedient to their law, we lie.

It appears to me that gnomish Dave thinks he needs a certain minimum of things in order to get by.

The idea of doing without, doing with a substitute of some sort, or changing one's life-style so as to not need that thing, whatever it is, any more, doesn't occur to him at all--even though you and I have been acquainted with the concept since we were knee-high to a grasshopper.

If the guy gets that social security disability where one never paid in--I forget which of the two it is--no matter how much it is, it's not going to be enough.

Such is the fate of people who think they have no obligation to at least try to get along without something.

Logged

Democrats: A bunch of rich people convincing poor people to vote for rich people by telling poor people that other rich people are the reason they are poor

I was eighteen, living with a fiance and two small children. Her five year old daughter and our newborn son. We had a place where we couldn’t really afford to pay even the rent, let alone utilities after food.

So, if you couldn't afford it WTF were you doing living there?

If you were 18 and she had a 5 year old she must have been a lot older than you, it seems you had a short circuit between your crotch and your brain. Then to have a second kid when you couldn't afford the one you already had was another stupid move.

The bottom line is you are a loser, you should not be able to breed and should be put on a work detail to earn the food you eat.

Logged

Basking in the glow of my white Privilege, while I water the Begonias with liberal tears!

Actually, at one time gnomish Dave had a pretty good job, as night desk clerk at a hotel in upstate Maine.

Because it was a night job, one reasonably assumes he wasn't too badly paid.

He wrote about this much when he was still on Skins's island, before he moved over to the jackpiners. He used to meet all sorts of really colorful, really interesting, characters in that job in the midlde of the night, so it was hardly a boring job either.

Logged

Democrats: A bunch of rich people convincing poor people to vote for rich people by telling poor people that other rich people are the reason they are poor